Does Michele Bachmann(R-MN) Keep Up With Current Events
[Bachmann:] "It really is about jobs and the economy. That doesn't mean people haven't [sic] forgotten about protecting life and marriage and the sanctity of the family. People are very concerned about that as well. But what people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he'll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we're fighting three wars. People recognize that."
There's not much that Michele Bachmann isn't afraid of, and she's pretty darn sure that every single thing she's afraid of represents an imminent danger to the United States. Being afraid of the rise of the Soviet Union, though? That's pretty old school, what with the notable handicap of them not existing anymore.
I've long thought that there's a certain group of conservatives who took the breakup of the Soviet Union harder than the Soviets themselves did. It was a simpler time, after all: Sure, the entire world could end in the span of half a day, but politics was much more straightforward. All you had to do was hate the communists, and anyone who associated with the communists, and anyone who sympathized with communists, and anyone who you suspected might sympathize with communists, and anyone who proposed anything that, when looked at cockeyed, sounded a little damn communist to you.
The problem with worrying about the geo-political entity known as the Soviet Union raising up is that it ended in 1991. I guess it is too much to expect that a conservative who wants to be president is actually aware of such world changing events. So that they could identify the actual challenges facing the US and not imagined ones. Many people think of China as a communist country, but it has changed its economic model to what economists have been calling authoritarian capitalism. China owns most of America's debt. As a matter of fact Bush put his two wars on the Chinese credit card.
